74 | JADE
SARAH L TAYLOR
The number one complaint from students was issues relating to Wi- Fi and internet coverage. A study by Welsh et al.( 2015) on student perceptions of mobile devices also identified reduced connectivity as one of the main challenges. The devices have a SIM slot, but since this activity was taking place on campus I wanted to test the boundaries of the newly set-up outdoor Wi-Fi. I had not realised the signal was so patchy, with many of the target trees falling outside the coverage area, for example to the west of the Huxley building( Figure 9). I think ratings of the ForestXplorer app would have been far higher if it had not kept dropping out due to the patchy signal. The internet issues are also to blame for some of the inaccuracies in target trees locations. This would have been an issue when recording the location and finding the target tree. SIM cards would greatly increase the running costs of outdoor educational activities. A way around this could be to tether the devices together, rather than load each with its own SIM card( Figure 10). However, this means the devices cannot be used independently of each other and students would need to maintain a visual with the tether point, therefore restricting the geographical range of activities.
Something I was surprised the students did not complain about was having to carry the heavy weight of the mobile digital device around the field – although perhaps this is only really an issue for the class organiser who has to carry the entire teaching set? And the ruggidised weather proof case added further to the weight of the device. Mauchline( pers. Comm., 2015) overcame this problem by using the smaller and lighter Apple iPad mini ®, and perhaps a sacrifice in screen size and camera quality is worth the lighter weight. However, developments in iPad technology means that the weight of devices is getting less, at 444g and 304g, respectively, for the Wi-Fi + cellular versions of the Apple iPad Air 2 ® and iPad mini 4 ®, compared to 730g for the older versions( Apple 2016).
This activity was supposed to be embedded into a year 1 undergraduate module in semester 2 of 2014. However, problems with the Apple laptop used to manage the devices in Apple Configurator ® meant the devices were locked down and could not be set up. There is nothing more stressful and upsetting to fail and let your students down at the last hurdle. The laptop had to be sent off to AppleCare for fault checks and was not returned until after the lab activities were scheduled to take place. As a result a paperbased exercise had to replace the iPad activity. This demonstrates the problem of relying on technology, and the need for a Plan B in case things go wrong. The“ iPads in HE” conference that took place in March 2014 was similarly affected by technical difficulties, and this is probably the biggest issue holding back the roll out of mobile learning devices. Furthermore, in such an evolving field, the